Return to the "POINTER VIEW"February 16, 2001
Return to the "POINTER VIEW"
February 16,
2001
WASHINGTON, D.C. (
GovExec.com) -- An e-mail virus promising an image of tennis star Anna Kournikova attempted to infect the federal government Monday.The Defense Department’s Joint Task Force on Computer Network Defense reported the virus at 12:50 p.m.
"We are classifying this as orders of magnitude less than the ILOVEYOU virus," said Maj. Perry Nouis, spokesman for the task force and the U.S. Space Command. "It is more of a nuisance than anything serious."
Monday’s virus filled inboxes with the subject header "Here you have, ;o)." It carried the attachment: "AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs." The vbs extension means the file was a visual basic script designed to install itself on a victim’s computer. It then propagated by sending itself out to every user in the victim’s address book. The file instructs the computer to open a Web browser every January 26 and direct it to the Web address www.dynabyte.nl.
While the virus spread quickly, it appeared that its payload was largely benign. Nouis said the virus was limited to unclassified networks and that some antivirus software detected it and some did not.